Chapter 8 - The Shadow on the Fire Escape
The sweet, nauseating smell of natural gas filled the dark apartment with terrifying speed.
My eyes began to water. My head throbbed as the oxygen in the room was rapidly displaced by the toxic gas.
I had less than three minutes before the concentration reached lethal levels—or before a single spark from an electrical relay turned the entire apartment into a firestorm.
I ran to the kitchen drawers. I pulled out a heavy steel meat tenderizer and a tactical flash-drive pouch. I wrapped a damp dish towel around my mouth and nose to filter out the gas fumes.
I sprinted toward the master bedroom.
The balcony shutters were reinforced steel, but the master bathroom had a small, frosted-glass privacy window that opened onto a narrow light well between our building and the brick apartment complex next door.
The window was small—barely eighteen inches wide—and sat five feet above the bathtub.
I climbed into the ceramic bathtub, raised the heavy steel meat tenderizer over my head, and smashed it against the frosted glass.
CRASH.
Glass shattered outward into the dark light well. Cold, fresh winter air rushed into the room, cutting through the thick, suffocating smell of gas.
I cleared the remaining sharp glass fragments from the window frame using the wrapped towel.
Through the narrow window, I could see the rusted iron framework of the building's original 1920s fire escape ladder hanging three feet away across the narrow alley gap.
I hoisted myself onto the edge of the bathtub, pushed my head and shoulders through the narrow window frame, and squeezed my body into the freezing air outside.
The wind off Lake Michigan blasted against my face, cold and reviving.
Six floors below lay the concrete alleyway.
I stretched my arms across the three-foot chasm, my fingers clawing at the icy iron railing of the fire escape.
My feet slipped on the wet window ledge.
For one horrific second, I hung suspended over the six-story drop, my fingers slipping on the freezing iron bars. I gasped, digging my fingernails into the rusted metal, and pulled my body across the gap with every ounce of strength I had left.
I collapsed onto the iron grid of the fire escape, shivering, gasping for breath, my hands bleeding from minor glass scratches.
Above me, from the window of Claire's apartment on the seventh floor, a faint flicker of yellow light appeared.
Ryan was standing by her window, holding a remote detonator unit, looking down at the street.
He didn't look toward the light well. He assumed I was trapped inside the gas-filled apartment, waiting for the spark.
I pulled myself up from the iron floor of the fire escape.
May you like
I didn't run down to the alley.
I began climbing up the iron stairs toward Claire's floor.
